


Persephone is having sex in hell

by Pistol



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:05:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pistol/pseuds/Pistol
Summary: There's a garden in the backyard of her house, one Jolene often forgets exists. Pooch had bought the house because of the garden, thinking it would make her happy to grow and nurture something after she failed to grow their second child.Beta help and emotional support by Krysis and Kate. <333Inspired by Persephone the Wanderer by Louise Glück
Relationships: Aisha al-Fadhil/Jolene
Kudos: 3





	Persephone is having sex in hell

_she doesn't know what winter is, only that she is what causes it._  
-Louise Glück

Jensen is the first to attempt to build a bridge between them. He’d tossed an arm over Jolene’s shoulder, planting a loud kiss on her cheek when he’d noticed her glaring.

_Give her a chance,_ he had begged in a quiet voice. He’d gone on to insist that Aisha was like an onion, _she'll make ya' cry - hell, she makes me cry all the time - but the important part is there are layers to her_.

Eventually Cougar had dragged Jensen away with an apologetic nod and Jolene had dismissed the conversation in favor of making sure Clay didn't burn the steaks. 

She remembers feeling Aisha's eyes on her that night, but every time she looked up Aisha was engaged elsewhere. Again, Jolene wrote it off as figments of her imagination, just another side affect of months of paranoia left over from when her husband had been called a terrorist.

+

A year later, Jolene still feels Aisha's eyes on her when her back is turned. It's not as irritating or threatening as she thinks it should be, and Jolene finds herself drifting into Aisha's orbit at get-togethers. It’s easier to be around Aisha when she has a reason to look her, when Aisha has a reason to stop hiding her looks.

They never talk unless someone else is there, usually Jensen- acting as the social lubricant that carries the conversations that no one else cares about. But Aisha smiles sometimes, red lips twitching up as she meets Jolene's gaze, rolling her eyes whenever Jensen gets too worked up over something only Cougar is bothering to follow. 

+

“You’re beautiful,” Aisha tells her over the rim of her wine glass. The words come out so soft that Jolene isn’t sure she heard it correctly at first. 

Jolene has nothing to say to that so she refills her own glass buying time to think. Aisha doesn’t seem to expect her to say anything, but the silence between them makes Jolene itch to say something. Anything, as long as it's true.

She settles on, “You’re not so bad yourself,”

+

When the call comes in, Jolene sends out a mass text with numb fingers. She speeds through red lights and avoiding both cops and patches of black ice by sheer luck. When she finally is being lead through the ER to her husband she’s there just in time to catch a doctor calling time of death. There are people talking to her, but Jolene has trouble focusing on them.

Aisha is the first to arrive, fierce and larger than life as she asks the questions Jolene can't put words to. She herds Jolene out of the room and holds her with uncertain arms as she shakes.

"He had an allergic reaction," Aisha explains to the others as they file in, "the witnesses said he tried to use his Epi-pen but it had been damaged at some point - it wouldn’t-"

Jolene stops listening to the story she knows by heart, the story she knows but can’t _understand_. Jensen and Cougar come in at the same time, moving to bracket her and guide her down the hall and away from the body lying in the gurney.

"I need to call the daycare center," she tells Jensen in between one cup of cocoa and the next.

"No worries, Jo," Jensen says with a smile that’s trying too hard to look real, "Aisha already asked Jennifer to go pick up the rugrat.”

Jolene glances down the hall to where Clay and Aisha are talking to a nurse with stern faces. After a moment Aisha trails off and glances over, her eyes softening as she gives Jolene a small nod.

+

At the funeral, Aisha is just _there_. She slips out of the cold air as easily as the snow and is there to stand next to Jolene at all the right times. She’s there to unleash her glare on anyone who comes close, to offer the platitudes to others that Jolene can’t. For a moment Aisha reminds her of Roque, and when that thought pushes her past the point of no return and the tears start to slip down her face Aisha goes from guard dog to terrified child.

"Do you…." Aisha pats awkwardly at Jolene's shoulder, "… should I?"

Something in Jolene breaks at the helpless confusion coming off Aisha in waves, and Jolene is laughing as she cries. She cries because it’s terrible, laughs because it’s hilarious, and wants to die because she’s not sure if she can survive the feeling in her chest. But she does. Aisha grabs her hand - too tightly - and stands there with snow in her hair and worried understanding in her eyes as she lets Jolene cry and laugh until she’s quiet.

"I don't know what to do," Aisha is still searching Jolene’s face, looking lost, "I'll get Jensen, okay?" She looks different - younger, and maybe a bit sweeter than normal - and Jolene thinks she prefers the other Aisha but she wouldn't mind seeing this side of her from time to time.

Pooch’s headstone is gleaming and new, and by the time his casket is lowered into the ground the letters carved into the marble are already filling with snow.

+

There's a garden in the backyard of her house, one Jolene often forgets exists. Pooch had bought the house because of the garden, thinking it would make her happy to grow and nurture something after she failed to grow their second child.

Jolene had tried - for him - but vegetables and flowers couldn't hold her attention and eventually the weeds took over. After a while Pooch stopped looking like his heart broke when he looked into the backyard.

"Jensen gave me a lily last year," Aisha tells her, her eyes lingering over the snarl of weeds, "but my apartment doesn't get much sunlight."

It's a lie, Jolene's seen the sunlit balcony that's connected to Aisha's bedroom, but she plays along. Aisha has become her rock, her friend, and not a half-bad babysitter over the last few months - offering her barren earth is the least Jolene can do. 

"I'm not using it," she says, nodding to the garden, "feel free to do with it what you want."

+

Jolene hasn't loved anyone as unequivocally as she loved Pooch. He was hers in the same way she was his, and a large part of her will never recover from his absence. But when she watches Aisha cursing at the tiny garden Jolene has never had time for she thinks she could give what's left of her heart to this woman who followed her boys home. 

Jolene's always been a sucker for strays.

+

Aisha's not an easy person to like. On her worst days she’s full of dark looks and threats that aren’t empty. On her best days she hides behind lazy masks in a way that speaks of damage that Jolene doesn't want to think about. It should be scary, and maybe it should be wrong, but it isn't.

Jolene knows Aisha still watches her. She knows that Aisha spends more time checking on the garden than is actually required and she knows from the tension in Aisha's shoulders that she's working herself up to something big. When it’s dark outside, sometimes Jolene thinks she knows what it is.

+

It seems natural that after a long day and more red wine than is perhaps necessary that Jolene proves she's just as brave as her Losers. When Aisha offers to call out for some Thai food Jolene throws her wine glass aside and lets it shatter on the floor. The wine is no doubt staining the carpet, but Jolene ignores it like she ignores the shards of glass piercing the tender flesh of her feet when she moves closer and kisses Aisha. 

"I don't understand you sometimes," Aisha says like maybe she's sorry about it.

"That's okay," Jolene says as gently as she can, "just remember to get a double order of mun tod when you call it in."

Aisha never calls in the order, and when Jolene wakes up to another person in her bed, the stain has set irrevocably into the carpet. It doesn’t seem like such a terrible way to live.

+

They never make an announcement, because with a group like theirs they don't need one. It's not awkward or weird, but when Jensen makes an inappropriate toast at their next get together about sexy ladies doing sexy things together for the good of America Jolene feels content in a way she hasn't since Pooch was shipped off to Bolivia.

\+ 

Aisha is good with Linwood Jr. in the way a tiger is with its cub. She's all about tough love, but Linwood seems to understand Aisha's harshness is born of concern. He loves Aisha and Aisha pretends she doesn’t care about him as much as she does. It’s sweet, if a little bitter.

"I never wanted children," Aisha confesses to her as they relax into the tub together, "but any child of yours is a child I would care for."

Jolene hums and walks her slippery fingers down Aisha's shoulder and into the water as she pulls Aisha's back closer to her chest. She loops her ankles inside of Aisha's, pulling her legs apart as far as the tub will allow. 

"Oh," Aisha breathes.

"Yeah," Jolene lets her teeth slide down the side of Aisha's neck as her fingers slide into Aisha, "_oh._"

+

It takes four years of sleepy sex, arguments over meaningless things, and visiting Pooch's grave with Aisha's hand tucked into one hand and Linwood Jr's in the other for Jolene to know that she's missing something. 

She starts to notice it in the way Aisha smiles at her with hooded eyes when someone hits on her in the grocery store and the way Aisha says Pooch's name. Sometimes when it’s dark out and Aisha is wrapped around her in their bed, Jolene can't fathom life without Aisha. Sometimes she can't fathom asking the half-formed questions that burn in the back of her mind. She wonders if maybe she doesn't want to know that something is off. Or maybe what she’s missing isn't something real, maybe it's the ghost of a man that used to lie where Aisha does. Maybe the lingering scent of motor oil in their house isn't so much a warning but something Jolene needs to learn to live with. 

+

"How far would you go for love?" Jolene asks without meaning to.

Aisha looks up from her garden, eyes squinting in the midday sun. "That's a stupid question," she wipes a hand over her face, leaving a trail of rich dark soil in it's wake as she resumes examining the garden, "I'd do anything for you. And Linwood."

Jolene smiles, grateful Aisha isn't watching her. She doesn't think it's a good smile.

"I'm thinking of planting a pomegranate tree," Aisha tells her.

+

Pooch, for all the violence of his job and the violence he tried to pretend wasn't lurking in his soul had never raised a hand to anyone who hadn't raised one first. 

Aisha has no such qualms and has never tried to hide or transmute the darker aspects of her soul. Pain, Jolene thinks, is fundamentally connected to love in Aisha's mind. Jolene knows Aisha thinks of nebulous things like a father's love and a mother's absence as explanations for her actions, but in truth Aisha has always worn her soul on her sleeve. 

If Aisha'd had a heart that survived her childhood intact Jolene thinks she'd have worn that too.

+

The Losers had always been more wolves than men, too wild and untamed to fit in anywhere that didn't require unwavering loyalty and blood on their hands. People had looked at Jolene like she was crazy for taking them into her house and heart, for letting them wash the blood from their hands in her kitchen sink, and for letting them snarl and snap at each other in her living room after missions that went bad. 

People forget that wolves, and men that act like wolves, are social creatures. Their violence is only the result of their love and loyalties being tested.

Humans, on the other hand, can do great violence without reason.  
Jolene has never understood why people would fear wolves when surrounded by humans. It's the humans that will get you if you aren't careful, it’s the humans that will kill you and then hold your wife's hand as they stand on your grave.

+

Aisha offers her a handful of glistening arils when her pomegranate tree comes to fruit. The tiny arils are too red and too freely given to look like anything but a metaphor. Jolene takes them from Aisha, squeezing her fingers around the fruit and thinking of Persephone dining in hell. 

They're sour on her tongue, but it's a flavor Jolene is familiar enough with lately.

"There was a pomegranate tree behind my mothers house," Aisha tells her, eyes counting each aril that passes Jolene's lips like she has designs to trap Jolene in her kingdom - a month for every seed casing she eats. 

When Aisha kisses her, tasting of pomegranate, Jolene's head swims with half formed thoughts of winter and men in graves. Of Pooch, who often left his Epi-pen laying carelessly around when he was working on something in the garage.

+

Jolene smiles when her fingers find Aisha's throat, and Aisha smiles back. Her lips and teeth are painted in red pomegranate juices that Jolene knows would taste nothing like blood. 

"I loved him," she explains, because it's a truth that needs to be said even if the words can't convey the full spectrum of what Jolene needs to say anymore than killing Aisha will.

"You loved me too."

Jolene nods, letting her fingers tighten over Aisha's throat. Aisha doesn't fight back, her smile and stillness saying more than Jolene's words ever could about love. Aisha understands revenge, understands its burn enough to not try to prevent Jolene from getting hers.

"Jolene," Aisha gasps weakly as the skin around Jolene's hands loses its color, "give me a kiss?"

Jolene will go to great lengths for the people she loves, so she leans in, pressing her lips to Aisha's. They come back tasting as sweetly sour as the sound Aisha makes before she stops moving.

**Author's Note:**

> Was previously posted, then taken down. Now it's back up. Beware the errors and typos, I suspect the files I found on my old harddrive are the pre-beta versions.  
Please don't steal any of my silly stories and change some names around and then try to sell them as books on Amazon or I'm gonna have to take everything down again.


End file.
